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Slovakia to temporarily ban Ukrainian grain imports — newspaper

On April 16, Poland and Hungary placed a temporary embargo on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products until June 30

© AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

PRAGUE, April 17. /TASS/. The Slovakian government will suspend grain imports from Ukraine, the Pravda newspaper reported on Monday.

The cabinet’s office will hold a meeting of an interdepartmental task force on the issue of temporarily restricting import of Ukrainian grain and a number of other product types later in the day, the paper said. "Further on it is necessary to impose stricter policies regulating the supply of goods from Ukraine at the government’s level," the newspaper quoted the government as saying.

On April 16, Poland and Hungary placed a temporary embargo on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products until June 30. Both countries stated that they were forced to take such an action due to the European Commission's failure to respond to their demands for European assistance to Hungarian and Polish farmers who suffered significant losses as a result of the overstocking of these countries' markets with agricultural products from Ukraine.

Earlier, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic welcomed the creation of a single European mechanism on the purchase of Ukrainian grain and the introduction in the European Union of customs quotas on Ukrainian agriculture products.

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